


The One Where House Is A Zombie

by thedeadparrot



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Crack, Gen, Zombies, house talking about his feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-09
Updated: 2009-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-02 04:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedeadparrot/pseuds/thedeadparrot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>House comes back as a zombie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One Where House Is A Zombie

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I realize that other people are writing zombies, too, but I'm pretty sure that this is different enough that I'm not ripping them off at all. Once again, many thanks to queenzulu and savemoony for the betas.

When House died, Wilson had felt a bit relieved. His friend was now put out of his misery, and now the entire hospital could breathe a deep sigh of relief. It wasn't that Wilson didn't miss House (he _did_). It was simply his time to pass, and Wilson had seen enough of that sort of thing to know that there was really nothing they could have done.

He went to the funeral almost cheerful, and he repeated those exact words to everyone he talked to. It was surprisingly easy, though he guessed that he did have lots of practice.

Cameron was a bit upset, sobbing loudly as they read the last rites, Chase at her side, distinctly not sobbing. It was a bit more like "manfully bawling". Foreman handed out the cigars.

Cuddy was probably tallying up in her head how much the hospital was saving, every second House wasn't working for them anymore, but her expression was somewhat inscrutable, so Wilson couldn't tell.

* * *

"I can't believe he's gone," Cuddy said, downing some whiskey. Wilson wasn't sure exactly how much she'd had to drink, but apparently, it was enough to get her to actually feel bad now that House was gone, so it was probably quite a bit.

"Yeah," Wilson said. He wondered exactly how much of House's crap House left for him in his will. He hoped it was a lot.

* * *

House came back from the dead on a quiet spring morning, when Wilson, by some twist of fate, decided to visit the grave a week later, because he wanted to remind himself that it had really happened. House was dead.

Also, he had lost his watch somewhere, and he had tried everywhere except the graveyard, so he figured he'd give it a shot.

He was debating whether it would be tacky or not to start digging into the flower bed, when a hand shot out of the grave, and started clawing at the ground around him.

Wilson was so freaked out that he did the least sensible thing he could think of and stared. _This is about the watch thing, isn't it?_ he asked God. _I swear I'll never do it again. Heck, I'll start eating kosher if you like._

When a body finally emerged, Wilson had also promised to call his mother every day and to start observing Sabbath, which would make his job a little bit hard, but between that and getting eaten by a zombie, not getting eaten by a zombie won every time.

"That's totally not as easy as it looks in the movies," House said. His skin was peeling, and most of his hair had fallen out, and his skin had that particular sort of death pallor that Wilson really hated. Basically, he was a zombie. Wilson really, really hoped this was some sort of elaborate dream or hallucination. He could probably handle it if it were that.

"So, uh," Wilson said, "you're a zombie." House started hopping up and down, and stretching out his muscles. Apparently damaged nerves didn't bother zombies that, because House was walking around pretty much normally, without a limp or a cane.

"Yeah," House said. "I'm kind of hungry too." He bent his arm behind his head in a semi-impossible way. Apparently, being a zombie made you really flexible. "BRAAAAAIIIIINS."

Wilson took a step back, ready to flee, but then House laughed.

"Nah, they're actually kinda gross. I could go for a cheeseburger, though." House patted Wilson on the shoulder and started walking jauntily (Wilson wasn't going to call it "skipping". He wasn't even going to _think_ it) toward the parking lot. Halfway there, he stopped. "Oh look, a watch."

* * *

McDonald's didn't exactly let them in, due to their "no dead people" policy, so they were forced to go to Burger King instead. Wilson figured that this only confirmed what he'd always known. Burger King was way cooler than McDonald's.

"So," House said, mouth full of cheeseburger. "What do little zombies play?" A few of the people around them stared, but House didn't seem notice them, as per usual.

"Uh," Wilson said, looking up from his fries. "I don't know?"

"Corpses and robbers," House said with a triumphant grin.

Wilson was still hoping that this was all a dream. Or, at least, a very elaborate hallucination. "What?" he asked.

"It's a joke," House explained, quite cheerfully. "You're supposed to laugh."

Wilson kind of wished his dream/hallucination was a little less bizarre and a little more like House. That would have been nice. "Um," he said.

House ignored him. "I don't remember cheeseburgers tasting this good while I was alive," he said, looking at the burger thoughtfully.

"It's probably the brains," Wilson muttered.

House brightened. "Hey, you're probably right. You think I could get some more of these?"

* * *

They decided to stop by Cuddy's after that, because Wilson wasn't sure where else to go, and he was hoping that Cuddy would be able to do _something_ about the whole zombie thing.

"Um," Cuddy said, looking somewhat stunned when opened her front door.

"He's a zombie," Wilson offered helpfully. If he could just speed things along a bit, maybe she could take care of the 'House coming back from the dead thing'. This was definitely more up her alley than his.

"Why do you keep harping on that?" House whined. "I bet you wouldn't say that if Jesus was here."

* * *

Cuddy, unfortunately, was not very useful, which Wilson found really disappointing, considering the number of times House had mentioned her dabbles in the black arts. House made himself completely unhelpful and started digging through Cuddy's refrigerator for the meat products, and Wilson wasn't going to think about the fact that House was probably looking for something that contained brains.

"So what do we do with him?" Wilson asked Cuddy.

Cuddy shrugged and looked around for the whiskey. "Fucked if I know."

House, of course, had his own ideas. "I could stay with you," he said, almost eager. It was a little freaky. As was the thought of a zombie living in his house. With him.

"Um, sure," Wilson replied, and then regretted it immediately.

* * *

The freakiest thing about House wasn't actually the whole undead thing, as weird as that seemed. It was that being dead had mellowed him out, somewhat, and had also given him a personality transplant.

"Hey," House said, when they got to Wilson's new house. "I like the house." There wasn't a trace of irony in his voice. "Is it new?"

Wilson kind of wanted to run screaming, but he suspected that the neighbors already thought he was crazy. No need to give them more ammunition. "Yeah," Wilson said. "It's new." He waited for the eye-roll, the sarcastic, snide remark, the edges of a sneer.

"Cool," House said.

* * *

The next day, Wilson took House with him to the hospital. Mostly because House was being whiny about being bored and Wilson wasn't quite sure he trusted House to be alone with his refrigerator at the moment.

It was oddly comfortable, walking back into the diagnostics department again.

"Holy shit," Chase said, mouth dropping open.

"What the fuck?" Foreman asked.

Cameron just sighed a little and got a doe-eyed.

Wilson just patted House on the shoulder and beat the hastiest retreat he could.

* * *

"Okay," House said, as he wandered into Wilson's office much later that day. Apparently, he hadn't eaten any of the fellows yet, so that was good. "So a zombie walks into a bar." He paused for effect. "And _then_ his head falls off and he dies."

"What?" Wilson said. The funeral arrangements had eaten up most of his free time in the past week, so there was a giant pile of new paperwork for him to do.

House plopped down on the chair across from Wilson and pouted. "You used to have a sense of humor."

Wilson stared at him and tried not to look too horrified. "You used to be funny."

* * *

As far as roommates went, House was probably just as bad now as he was when Wilson was crashing his place, even though their positions were reversed. Wilson had always known that House was sloppy, careless and lazy, but that didn't exactly prepare him for House's socks. The ones that he left lying around Wilson's house. With bits of peeling skin left inside.

"Seriously," Wilson said to him. "You've got to stop shedding."

It was early in the morning, so House was still in bed, since all he seemed to do all day was sleep, eat, and occasionally visit the hospital to annoy Wilson while he was doing work. It wasn't that different from the way things were before, except now, he was living in _Wilson's_ house eating _Wilson's_ food, and Wilson couldn't quite get over the fact that he found it all to be just a little bit irksome. "What?" House said, rubbing his eyes.

"You've got to stop shedding. It's gross." If Wilson were made of sterner stuff, he would have brought examples, but he couldn't quite bring himself to touch and of the scattered pieces of skin left lying around the house.

House's faced deflated. "Look," he said, sounding genuinely contrite. "I'm sorry, dude. I can't really help it, you know." His eyes fell to the floor (not literally) and Wilson felt a little bad for him.

He resisted the urge to give House a hug, though his "pissed off roommate" shtick probably wasn't as effective as he'd hoped, because he did end up giving House a friendly pat on the shoulder.

* * *

It was around the third day when House began to smell.

"I can start carrying around an air freshener," House offered, and Wilson tried not to be a bit freaked out by House actually trying to be helpful.

"Seriously," Wilson said. "You're beginning to rot." It was hard to be within five feet of House at the moment, but Wilson had managed to keep himself from holding his nose.

"Yeah," House said, a bit balefully. "That kind of sucks, doesn't it?" He sniffed his own armpit and then shrugged. "Huh. I guess that only works when you have functioning olfactory nerves."

"You have been showering, at least, right?" Wilson asked, rubbing his forehead.

House snapped his fingers. "Damn.  I knew I was forgetting something."

* * *

"Do you want to know what vegetarian zombies eat?" House asked as he made a sandwich. He was sitting in Wilson's favorite chair at the kitchen table and using Wilson's best jam, the kind Wilson used on 'I feel shitty today' peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Wilson did his best not to be irked by that.

He sighed and rubbed his forehead. "No," he said, voice a bit testy. "What do they eat?"

"Graaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnssss," House replied. Then he burst out laughing. Some of the jelly dripped off the knife House was holding and landed on the tablecloth. Wilson's left eye twitched.

"That joke's not any funnier now that you're dead, you know." Wilson thought of all the interesting ways he could kill himself, but knowing the universe, all that would mean would be an eternity of being a zombie. With House. For eternity.

"Oh, c'mon," House said, with a bit of a whine at the end. "That one's _hilarious_."

* * *

Late one night, Wilson came back from work to find House on his couch, playing a video game, and Wilson just wanted to sprawl a bit and watch, letting friendly, manly silence settle in between them. But when he say down, House paused the game and started talking.

"Look," House said, fiddling with the cord to the controller. "I get this feeling like you resent me for reason. Is it something I've done?"

"No," Wilson said, putting all the annoyance and weariness of the day into his voice. "You're just my best friend's reanimated corpse. There's no reason for me to resent you at all."

"Oh, good." House's nervousness had dissipated. He looked almost happy now. "You had me worried there for a sec." He punched Wilson on the shoulder and went back to playing Katamari on Wilson's PS2.

* * *

The next morning, Wilson got into work early because there was an important meeting that he had to attend.

"Okay," he said to the living three quarters of the diagnostics department, as he paced around the room. "House talked to me about his feelings last night. On a scale of one to ten of how freaked out I am right now, I'm at about a fifty."

The (former) fellows stared at him. They looked a little terrified.

"Well," Foreman said cautiously. "He is a zombie."

"Doesn't mean that he's suddenly turned into a girl," Chase offered.

Cameron glared.

"Not that, um, all girls want to do is talk about their feelings," he quickly amended.

"He's still House," Cameron said. She was wearing nose plugs. House hadn't come in yet. They still had about an hour. But it didn't really hurt to be too careful.

"Just... happier," Foreman said. Half his face was scrunched up, as if he was resisting the urge to twitch.

"And more zombified," Chase put in.

Wilson put his hands on his hips and stared at the ceiling. "Not helping," he said. "A few days ago he called me his rock. What does that even mean?"

The fellows shrugged, though Chase looked suspiciously amused. "No idea," Cameron said.

"How the fuck would I know?" Foreman said.

* * *

So everything was a little awkward that for a while, because Wilson jumped every time he thought House was about to start another conversation about his feelings. Which was a lot.

But there was only one more time, with House getting all hurt about Wilson insisting that he needed to shower more and to not drink the milk directly out of the cartoon, because there was more dead skin in there, and Wilson was seriously beginning to worry about maggots.

Everything was beginning to work out okay, though. Wilson was losing his sense of smell, House was still assisting the ducklings, though that was mostly over the phone, since no one really wanted to be in his presence for more than ten minutes at a time, and Wilson was mostly okay with that, because it meant that he only had to listen to the bad zombie jokes five times a day instead of twenty.

Eventually, he just kind of forgot about the whole zombie thing entirely and thought of House as a really annoying roommate that he couldn't quite get rid of.

* * *

It was discovered forty days after House had come back from the dead that the whole zombie thing was really just some sort of crazy reanimation virus thing, and that House was patient zero.

Which wasn't very fun because it meant that House had to die (again) to stop an outbreak.

"Man, that sucks," House said with a shrug when the five of them broke the news to him. "But I've had an awesome time." He gave Wilson a giant hug. "Thanks for letting me crash on your couch, man."

Wilson did his best not to throw up from the smell. He was kind of used to the general diffuse House-smell, but up close it was an entirely different story. Wilson was pretty glad that House was dying so that they all didn't have to, though.

There were four matching stunned expressions from the peanut gallery. "Okay," Foreman was whispering to Chase. "That is the scariest thing I've ever seen in my life."

Chase nodded. His eyes were really wide, and he had an oddly stricken look on his face.

* * *

Wilson was the one who got to do the final honors, because Cuddy thought it was all his fault anyway, Foreman thought that it was more trouble than it was worth, and Chase and Cameron thought it was too gross. They decided on the graveyard, because that way it was easier to hide the body. House insisted that he wanted it done with an axe, and Wilson said that he'd watched _Evil Dead_ too many times.

"I'm glad it's you," House said, as Wilson lifted the axe. "I totally had a crush for the longest time."

"What?" Wilson said, freezing. Okay, House always did have a flair for saying the wrong things at the wrong times, but this was a little much.

"Before I died," House said. "I had this humongous crush. It was pretty pathetic." He smiled, like he was laughing at a private joke.

"Why didn't you say anything?" Wilson asked, because why was he always the last to know about these things? Life was massively unfair. He was still holding up the axe.

House shrugged. "I was being a coward. Since I've come back, though, I've discovered that you're a massive killjoy, and I have no idea why I even liked you in the first place."

"Hey!" Wilson said. It was hard not to feel a little offended. His arms were beginning to hurt a bit from holding up the axe. It wasn't like being a doctor involved a lot of heavy lifting.

"Sorry," House said, and he sounded like he meant it. There were a few moments of awkward silence between them, because there wasn't really much you could say to that. Wilson finally put the axe down, and he was pretty sure his shoulders were going to ache tomorrow.

"I guess we should get on with the re-killing now," House said, eventually. He sounded more resigned than anything else, and Wilson almost felt bad for him.

"Yeah," Wilson replied, bringing the axe down and cutting off House's head.

It landed on the ground with a plop.

 

FIN.


End file.
